Change is not an Option, Get good at it!

You can’t avoid change, whether in a relationship, what is valuable at work, or the latest update to a favorite App. You either adapt or experience stress and just get by. Ideally, you find opportunity in the change and thrive.

Why is Change so Hard?

Blame it on your neural networks! Our thoughts, perspectives, understandings, and habits become wired into neural networks. This is great as long as they make sense and reasonably represent reality. Unfortunately, things change, and a new normal sets in. This can be upsetting, frustrating, or downright debilitating. 

It's frustrating when you watch a YouTube video to learn how to use an App only to discover that the layout in the video is different from the one on your phone. 

It can be debilitating when your computer suddenly freezes while working on a time-critical document. And you have no idea what to do.

Your old neural networks don’t help, and the fact that they don’t is stressful. Things that once made sense now become uncertain, less predictable, and stressful.

Stress reinforces overlearned ways of perceiving the world. Old habits dominate, and it is more difficult to entertain alternative views. We become less open to new ways of seeing things when we need them most.

Neuroscience can Help

.About a decade ago, a peculiar pattern became evident in many neuroimaging studies.

The pattern is called the “default network,” and it shows up when the person in the scanners is not performing a proscribed task. These were the times between performing the experimental task. People were free to do as they liked, and the brain liked to activate the default network.

One of the common activities that is associated with the default network being active is rumination. Rumination is the tendency to repeatedly focus on the same negative thoughts. Typically, rumination is about past events or what might happen in the future. Neither can be resolved, and both are about the self or ego. They are about thoughts going on inside the person's head and are autobiographical. Rumination often has its roots in fear or uncertainty and starts with a flight or flight response, which revs up stress hormones. Rumination keeps the fight or flight response active, which drains the mind and body of energy.

Recently, researchers discovered that activating the default network impedes the transmission of sensory information from the body and visual input. Ruminators are biased toward seeing the world through their negative thoughts, and they become less flexible or adaptive to new information.

Here is the good news: those who frequently meditate are less likely to experience the sensory shutdown when the default network is engaged. They also score higher on openness to new experiences and are adaptively more flexible. Yet, we can enhance our openness to change without years of meditation.

Openness to Experience or Change

Openness to Experience is one of the five core personality traits. "Open to experience" means having a personality trait where someone is willing to try new things, embrace new experiences, and is generally curious about the world around them, often seeking variety and novelty in their life. It is a dimension where some of us rate higher than others. Nowadays, to deal with change, we all need all the openness we can get.

Traits are relatively fixed and are the approach an individual applies to most situations. Yet, the same individual's openness will vary depending on their stress level, fear, and perceived sense of safety.

Earlier, I mentioned that ruminating thoughts are typically negative and egocentric; that is, they are inwardly focused on the self. The alternative is to become allocentric, where the reference point does not start with the individual but rather the association between things in the outside world, where things have changed.

How can we become more flexible and engage in allocentric thinking? Nature can play a big role. The evidence is very clear: exposure to nature calms the mind and the body.

Neuroception, unconscious input from nature, can create a sense of safety. The most likely explanation is that our neurobiology evolved in the natural world, not the man-made world we live in today.

One example is the impact of seeing fractals in nature. Fractals are the repetitive patterns so common in nature, like the pattern in this image. From an evolutionary perspective, orderliness is akin to safety. If the repetitive pattern were disturbed, it might indicate the presence of a threat. 

We now have good evidence of the neuroception of fractals. The brain shows evidence that it has detected fractals in less than 50 milliseconds. This is before conscious thought occurs.

Another safety-related example with a likely evolutionary root is the calming effect we experience when we hear birds singing in nature. However, if the birds suddenly stop signing, we immediately become more alert, and a fight or flight response is likely to be triggered. Why is this? Birds stop singing when they see or perceive a threat. This results in a neuroception, in us, the activation of fast neural networks that put us on alert.

If this blog has motivated you to become more open-minded and eager to become better at change, we have a step-by-step guide that will help you apply the principles in this paper.

Get a step-by-step guide to promoting Openness to Experience - Change is not an Option

Need so immediate help with stress and ruminating? Step outside into a parlor, a natural setting, and notice the patterns and sounds.